Ragged Top Mountain, Arizona, USA
U.S. Bureau of Land Management photo by Chris Tincher (fair use policy)
Ragged Top Mountain is part of the recently created Ironwood Forest National Monument in Arizona. Theodore Roosevelt IV, great-grandson of America's most powerful conservationist, testified before Congress in 2001 about the virtues of this region: "Ragged Top Mountain is a biological and geological crown jewel amid the depositional plains in this monument. The monument presents a quintessential view of the Sonoran Desert with ancient legume and cactus forests. The geological and topographic variety of the monument contributes to the area's high biological diversity."
Ragged Top is a body of Miocene rhyolite, evidence of the active history of the Basin and Range province as it fractured under severe east-west extension. It is associated with copper-bearing rocks in the nearby Silverbell Mountains, one of many metalliferous deposits in the high western states. Rocks like it occur throughout the Great Basin.
